


Where Nightmares and Dreams Collide

by MTriniSepulveda (WriterOfStories)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener & Peter Parker are Siblings, Infinity Gems, More tags to be added, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), written before spider-man far from home came out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 12:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20064367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterOfStories/pseuds/MTriniSepulveda
Summary: Nightmares are a norm for anyone who has been through a traumatic experience. Peter is no exception. Well, except he was a superhero, and his nightmares were way past normality. After coming back from the war, Peter starts having nightmares that he can't remember... He could remember the fear, the pain, but never the visuals... until he did.With his friends worried for his mental health, they set of to find the only thing–– the only person that could help him. A girl. Stranger to all of them but Peter's nightmaresWhat could this girl mean? What could she bring? What could she do for grieving, maddening, teenagers?Perhaps more than they ever dreamed of... Perhaps give them Tony Stark...





	Where Nightmares and Dreams Collide

Running was great. Peter had never really tried running for fun instead of towards some kind of danger, but there was really… something to it. Having the music blasting through his earphones, the burning sensation in his lungs, the nap that comes after (or that will  _ hopefully _ come)... It was great.

_ Stark… you have my respect. I hope the people of Earth will remember you. _

The rushing wind was also a plus when running. Due to his super-human abilities, Peter could run faster and for longer than normal people. The rushing wind ruffling his hair was a nice welcome feeling. 

_ Rusting crashed spaceships. The smell of dust mixed with the metallic sting of blood.  _

He had been running for almost an hour by the time they found him. His pulse was beating loudly behind his ears, almost louder than the music he was playing. Peter didn’t even know what music he was listening to; every playlist he previously had on his phone had been discarded the moment he came back from–––– nevertheless, the music was good. He wasn’t really paying attention to it, but it was good. Helped him keep running at a constant rate. 

_ Titan. Titan. To–––– _

“Parker!” 

Peter startled, tripping with his own feet to a stop, a second away from face planting in the middle of Central Park. He lazily glanced around without much effort. As he plucked one earbud off, his eyes fell on a familiar curly-headed girl heading his way. Peter’s shoulders sagged as he went to put the earbud back on and turn around to keep running. He was not in the mood to talk to MJ at the moment.

“Peter, wait!” As much as he wanted to, he didn’t start running right away. He stood still, letting her catch up with him. While he waited, he turned off the music and hung both earbuds over his neck together.

MJ came into his field of view and Peter just muttered a small, “Hey.”

“Where have you been?” MJ was not one to beat around the bush with things. She always went directly to the point even if ––sometimes–– it got her in trouble for being too blunt. Peter couldn’t really care much about her bluntness because, after almost a year of being friends, it was something he was quite used to by now. “Look, I don’t give a crap if you don’t want to tell me, but your aun–––”

“May’s at work, MJ,” Peter interrupted her, “and she knows I’m here.”

“Does she? ‘Cause she told Ned you were hanging out with us.”

Peter didn’t answer to that. He simply looked away, towards the trees and the people walking around. It was so easy to see who was snapped into oblivion and who wasn’t. Those who had survived, look around in wonder at everything, kind of how a five-year-old does. Peter knew that animals and plants had been dusted as well as humans, so he could kind of understand the sudden interest of some people, but for him… the world was almost the same. Almost. “She knows I’m out.”

“You’ve never lied to her,” MJ crossed her arms in front of her. Peter landed his gaze back in MJ and frowned slightly without a word. “Ok, asides from your… bug thing.”

_ I just wanted to be like you!  _

_ And I wanted you to——  _

“Well, you found me,” he muttered as he glanced up back at her, almost shaking those thoughts away from his head, “Can I go back to running?” 

MJ was rendered speechless, apparently, given that the only reaction from her was a slack jaw and silence. Peter nodded to himself and started to jog away, not going into full sprint quite yet, but it was fast enough that MJ also had to jog to catch his hand and force him to a stop. Peter didn’t turn to look at her this time; he just lazily gazed at the skyline of New York City. Beyond the park, beyond the buildings, but not high enough to be reminded of the flying donut-like spaceship.

They stood like that for a few seconds, MJ holding him in place with a gingerly grasp on his wrist. It wasn’t like her to go full feelings-mode. She usually avoided those talks, but it seemed like they were about to have one now. She was worried, not that Peter could bring himself to care (not in the heartless way, it’s just he couldn’t seem to care about anything lately). “Why are you doing this?”

When he didn’t answer, MJ tugged his wrist forcing him to turn around. Peter didn’t look her in the eyes until another tug to his wrist happened. “Doing what?”

“Running yourself to death.”

“I’m… not.”

“Yeah, ok. The truth now.”

Peter gritted his teeth and tugged away his wrist. He was tired, his muscles were aching, and MJ had interrupted the haze he had been running on. “Because I wasn’t fast enough, ok?”

“Wh—”

Peter huffed frustrated and took a step closer, glancing around to make sure no one could hear him. “Spider-Man wasn’t fast enough… and I lost another dad because of him.”

MJ didn’t seem to like how Peter referred to Spider-Man as another person. “How does that even… connect? It wasn’t your fault, Peter.”

“But it was!” He groaned, running his hands through his hair desperately. “If I had been faster, Tha— Thanos wouldn’t have been able to snap, and, and, and I…” 

“Peter,” MJ hand came to rest on his forearm, stopping his ramblings immediately and successfully grounding him away from the panic attack that was brewing in his chest. “It wasn’t your fault.” 

“But—”

“No, shut up,” MJ got of both his hands. A few months back, Peter would’ve been freaking out about holding hands with her. He had a not-so-subtle crush on the girl. But now, he couldn’t even bring himself to care. “Thanos would have snapped either way, hell, he would have killed you for the gauntlet back. And I don’t know about the last battle, but I highly doubt that it was your fault Tony died.” 

Peter didn’t meet her eyes anymore. The prickling sensation behind his eyelids, mixed with his heightened sight and the bright sunlight, it was all becoming too much. The brewing panic attack didn’t help either. He was suddenly too focused on the smell of pretzels from the nearby vendor, on the stench of blood and sweat, on the faded aroma of the flowers…

“He did it because of me,” he managed to whisper through the growing knot on his throat, “during the… the funeral, the heroes kept coming to me and—and saying that he did it for me. To bring me back…” 

MJ wasn’t the touchiest person, but she still snaked her arms to pull him into a hug. Peter let his head rest against hers, letting his eyes fall shut. His body was shaking. “Dick move…” 

Peter let out a wet chuckle as he brought her even closer to him. While MJ wasn’t used to showing physical affection, she knew Peter was, so she just let him. Peter clearly needed more affection and help than MJ disliked hugs. 

“C’mon,” she said a bit later as Peter stepped back, running a hand on his cheeks to get rid of the few tears that escaped, “let’s have one of your Geek Nights.” 

That incited another chuckle from Peter. ‘Geek Nights’, as MJ called them, were movie nights the three of them (with Ned) did every so often before getting dusted. Despite calling them that, MJ never missed one. “Fine.”

MJ gave him a satisfied smirk, one that told Peter she would’ve won either way, before pulling him towards the sub. They were quite far from his home. MJ had sent a text to Ned, informing him of the sudden plans, and then the both sat in silence. He paid attention to everything around him unintentionally; the lady next to him who was talking on the phone (I’m just so done, I—I can’t. He’s such a narcissist!), the toddler swinging their legs in front of him, the rumbling of the tires under them. 

The higher they went, the shakier the spaceship got. His mind too focused on holding on to worry about the little air his lungs were getting. 

Peter let his head fall against the glass as he let out a soft sigh. MJ glanced at him and propped up her knee towards her chest, looping an arm around it to hold it in place. It wasn’t an awkward silence, it was the opposite actually, but it was still silence. Silence around Peter was odd, and that was making it weird. But he couldn’t bring himself to care about that either. He was far too deep into his thoughts for that. 

“Hey,” MJ softly nudged his knee with her own, successfully gaining his attention, “I don’t think I’ve said this before—I probably should have much earlier, but I’m sorry about Tony.”

Peter gave her a lopsided sad smile, “You didn’t need to, but thank you.”

MJ frowned in confusion at his response. 

Peter huffed out a soft chuckle before turning his head back to look at the ceiling, “You’ve done a lot for me lately, that’s better than any condolences anyone can give.” 

“I haven’t done that much.”

Peter scoffed, “You just went to Central Park to stop me from ‘running myself to death.’”

MJ looked away, resting her chin on her knee, but Peter still noticed the smile creeping up her lips at him noticing her efforts. Peter smiled to himself and continued mulling over his own thoughts. It was good to know that he had people there for him, despite him feeling like he was alone. It was a nice bucket of ice water to wake him up. It was also so different from when Ben died because it had been a sudden change; Ben had always been there, the mere idea of him gone hadn’t crossed his mind and then it happened. But May had been grieving as well, even Ned, but now it was just him. Pepper and Morgan were too far away, Happy was around from time to time but otherwise busy, and he had never really talked to Rhodey other than the occasional crossing during the weekends he stayed at the tower. 

He had felt so alone and MJ was the bucket of ice he needed to remember he wasn’t. 

The rest of the ride was spent in silence. They didn’t say a word to each other as they switched trains and then a bus to get home. Peter grabbed the spare key from its hiding spot —behind the loose number on the door that no one knew it was loose— and opened the door, letting his friend go in as he placed the key back. 

Ned was sitting, almost sprawled, on the couch. Peter had told him long ago to just go in if May was at work——he even knew where the key was. He was scrolling through his phone absentmindedly and jumped at the sound of the opening door. He stared at the two as they entered. MJ frowned as she flung her messenger bag over her head and dropped it on the dining table, “What?”

“Nothing.” 

Peter huffed out another small laugh as he placed his phone and wallet on the table before making a bee-line to the bathroom. He came out ten minutes later with wet hair and comfy clothes to find MJ and Ned whispering back and forth. “I hope you’re not talking about me,” Peter tried to joke but it fell flat. 

“Uh,” Ned started after a few seconds of silence, “why do you keep going to Central Park?” 

It was direct to the point so Peter just repeated what he had told MJ before. Obviously, less tears and panic attacks involved. By the end, Peter cleared his throat and curled up into himself even more and his two friends were frowning.

“Who told you it was your fault?” “How long have you been doing this?”

The two talked at the same time, only glancing at each other as they finished their questions. The two seemed to be having a mental debate about who’s question should be answered first. Peter stopped the debate as he spoke up again, “I’m not telling you that, MJ, and… two weeks? I—I think… I… haven’t really kept up with dates…”

“Why not?” This time, MJ beat Ned to talk altogether. Her voice was also mixed with a scoff, making it seem even angrier, “I have a few words for them.”

Peter shook his head lightly, voice going softer as he let his head rest against the back of the sofa, “They’re Avengers—”

“So?”

“They were also grieving, probably didn’t think how it sounds—”

“Or maybe didn’t think at all,” MJ muttered under breath. Peter shook his head but a slight amusement could be seen growing on his face. 

“I don’t want you to go to jail for hurting the Avengers.”

“I would just… heavily maim them, that’s all.” Ned laughed at her words, letting his head fall back as his laugh engulfed the silence. Peter was sporting an amused and chuckling smile as he looked at the two.

Once Ned’s laughter died down, after a few seconds of muffled snorts, the boy turned to look at Peter with a bit more seriousness on his face. “Is it because of the nightmares?” Peter immediately averted his eyes, taking great interest in May’s intricate colored rug, “It is, isn’t? They came back?”

“Nightmares?” MJ butted in confused. She hadn’t heard of said nightmares before. By how Peter looked when she found him at the park earlier, she had guessed that he hadn’t been sleeping much, but this was a confirmation. 

Peter didn’t answer. 

“He’s been having nightmares about Titan—”

“They’re not about Titan,” Peter interrupted quietly but gaining their attention immediately. “They’re not. I—I thought it was, but it isn’t.” 

The nightmares had started the day of the funeral, a month and a half ago. The kind of nightmare that wakes you up disoriented and with a heavy feeling of dread in your gut. He had been having them every night, making him wake up before the sun rose. But that wasn’t the frustrating part, with all the thoughts of Tony he wasn’t going to get that much sleep anyway, it was the fact that he could not remember a thing about it other than a dusty orange place. It was all he could remember. 

At the start, he simply associated it to Titan. PTSD and the war and the grieving manifesting into nightmares. But then, as the days went by, he started remembering more things that didn’t match up with Titan. Ned being there, MJ, May… His therapist —something May had quickly signed him up for after the funeral after finding out she used to work for the Avengers— said it was PTSD. Seeing important people in his dreams, mixing reality with impossible things such as his aunt being in space. But then Peter started wondering why Tony never showed up, or Happy, or Pepper… People he had come to think of as a family. 

And then, one night, he had the nightmare again. And he woke up with dread in his gut. And the image, a perfectly detailed image, of a girl he had never met before. She had curly-coily dark hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. He couldn’t remember the exact sound of her voice, but he knew it was commanding. 

He had tried telling his therapist, all his theories of what that orange place could have been. But it got immediately dismissed as a creative imagination. Pepper told him that it was better to let it go, and May just worried. Happy had this strange half-worried half-sad expression whenever he talked about it. Every adult in his life was telling him to let it go, and he just couldn’t. So he had resorted to running; running from memories, running from thoughts, from Tony’s death, and from that mystery girl. And from it, he would also get faster and would be able to avoid something like this from happening again. 

“Then, what is it?”

Peter looked between his friends with hesitance. They could go to May and tell her to send him to a mental hospital. Or they could believe him, which was almost impossible. 

He glanced down at his hands and muttered out, almost ashamedly, “The soul stone…”

His friends blanked for a second. He had told them everything he knew about the stones, especially since after the war he needed people to talk to who had at least a bit of background knowledge, and his friends seemed like sponges when he explained it to them. Grasping every concept with ease and wonder. They knew of the stones too; they knew as much as Peter did. 

“The… soul stone?”

Peter nodded, twisting and turning his index finger between the others, “I don’t think we… died, when we got dusted. What if we went to the soul stone, and spent those five years in it?”

Ned and MJ looked at each other doubtfully and Peter noticeably deflated. He had had hopes that maybe they would’ve trust him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he also knew how insane that sounded. 

“Why the soul stone specifically?” Ned spoke up after a few seconds. “Why not the time stone? Frozen in time maybe…”

“Or the space stone, trapped in a different dimension…” Peter perked up at the ideas his friends were throwing at him. Ned had turned to face more MJ a bit more as they continued to give ideas. They were almost going down the list of stones and giving reasons how they could’ve been the reason for the dusting. Peter just watched in silence as they debated about the power of the reality stone; he knew his had good friends, but they were going beyond his expectations. Did this mean they actually believe him? 

“Wait,” he interrupted them as they moved on to the mind stone. The two turned to look at him, expectantly, “you’re… you’re not going to call me… crazy?”

“Dude,” Ned scoffed amusedly, “you have spider-like powers and fight aliens. This isn’t the craziest thing you’ve said.”

“Besides,” MJ continued, “you’re usually… right in these kind of things.”

Peter snorted quietly, unable to stop himself from making fun at that, “Did that hurt to say?”

MJ nodded exaggeratedly, “Don’t let it get to your head.” The three chuckled and fell into a nice silence. There were good friends, and then there were his friends. Peter had gotten in one or two (a lot actually) sticky situations during between his time fighting Vulture and the dusting that required calling his two friends for ‘hypothetical’ advice. So, his instinct was to deny MJ’s words, but he knew she wasn’t talking about the small fights. She was talking about following Vulture and how he had been right from moment one despite being basically pushed aside by the adults.

“But why the mind stone? There is so many of them.” Ned asked. 

“Because that’s the only stone mentioned in my dream.”

Ned was sitting upright and leaning closer to him immediately. MJ didn’t react the same way but she also didn’t know the seriousness of the dreams. The vagueness of them were always a constant until the first appearance of the mystery girl, and then she became a constant. She had been showing up every night for the last two weeks, always doing something different in a different situation but Peter didn’t remember much about that anyways. Then, much like he had perfectly remembered the mystery girl, he could remember someone mentioning the soul stone. 

“Peter. Dude. You’ve  _ got  _ to keep me updated about stuff that happens on your dream man,” Ned grumbled. Peter just gave him an apologetic short chuckle and let his head rest against the back of the armchair he was sitting on. MJ leaned forward, leaning her elbows on her knees as she played with the hair tie on her wrist, and looked at the two boys. 

“So,” MJ spoke up, interrupting the shaking-heads in exasperation and amusement Ned and Peter were doing correspondly, “say that we did get… sucked into this stone. Then maybe this girl is… also real, maybe we can find her.”

“What for?”

“Well, if I can remember her then maybe she remembers me.” Peter continued as he caught up with MJ’s idea. 

“So?”

MJ shrugged, “Wouldn’t that prove his theory right? That we didn’t die but got sucked in into the stone?”


End file.
